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Intercultural Approaches to ELT
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Ethnographic projects for learners can be more or less developed than
those that strictly follow the guidelines that Damen suggests. A less
detailed ethnographic project might follow the tradition of media
research, and take the form of, say, a small-scale survey of how a group of
non-native speakers watch and respond to a US sitcom, shown locally on
cable television. Again, the observation would be systematic, and take into
consideration the way the audience ‘interacts’ with the programme: e.g. do
they comment on anyone, or anything, while the programme is being
shown, at what points do they laugh or groan (and for how long), and what
is their opinion of the characters and situations? If the learners have access
to native speakers, a cross-cultural comparison of audience response can be
built up.
A much more detailed course in ethnographic learner-training is
described in Barro
et al
. (1998) and Roberts
et al
. (2001). Lecturers at
Thames Valley University in Ealing, England, developed a course to
prepare modern languages students for ethnographic fieldwork during
their ‘year abroad’, that part of their studies in which they live in the
country whose language they are learning. The Ealing Ethnography
programme was developed over three years in three distinct stages: (1) an
introduction to ethnography during the second year of a BA programme,
(2) fieldwork conducted during their year abroad, and (3) a written
project, completed in the final year of the degree programme, based on
the fieldwork undertaken. The project had to be written in the target
language. The introductory programme in ethnography covered such
skills as participant observation, interviewing, conversation analysis,
recording and analysing ‘naturally occurring’ events, as well as topics such
as non-verbal communication, family structures, gender relations,
education, national and local identities, politics and belief structures (Barro
et al
., 1998: 82). This programme was taught ‘experientially’ through
fieldwork in the home culture, in the expectation that ethnographic skills
thus developed would transfer to investigation of the target culture later.
However, there was also background reading, mainly of academic texts in
the discipline of ethnography. Although the Ealing Ethnographic project is
elaborate and integrated fully into the degree programme at Thames
Valley University, it is still distinguished by the course team from ‘real’
ethnographic research. They conclude (Barro
et al
., 1998: 97):
The students are not intending to become specialists in social anthro-
pology. They are language students who, we hope, will become even
better language students as a result of living the ethnographic life . . .
They need the cultural tools for making sense of new intercultural
contacts and experiences rather than positivistic facts about other
Ethnographic Approaches to Culture and Language
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countries, structures and systems which are, despite the text-books’
attempts to freeze-dry them and turn them into fresh-looking, digest-
ible items of information, constantly in a process of contestation and
change.
From the limited to the elaborate, then, there is a range of ways in which
learners can be encouraged to ‘live the ethnographic life’. Much depends
upon the context of learning and the resources available to teachers and
students; however, the basic materials for ‘pragmatic ethnography’ (i.e.
someone to talk to and some events to observe) are available to different
learners to some degree. At one extreme is a course like the Ealing Ethnog-
raphy programme, which benefits from academic integration, legitimacy
and funding. At the other extreme, home-based EFL learners are restricted
to more limited access to native speakers and target culture products
through media input, and communication at a distance. Even so, as we
have seen, ethnographic skills can be developed through ‘decentring’
activities that analyse the home culture, and imaginative use of whatever
target language speakers and products are available. Morgan (2001)
reports on an ‘international partnership project’ through which schoolchil-
dren in France and England learnt more of each other’s culture by creating
and sending by post materials on specific topics, such as law and order.
Byram (1997b: 81–6) considers the materials available to teach French on
the east coast of the USA, where connections with France (and even
francophone Canada) are limited. In this case, there is indeed a greater
dependence on media sources, supplemented by access to any native
speakers in the community, and occasional help from educational agencies
such as the Alliance Française and the French Embassy. For English, the
British Council has long been a source of information and materials in edu-
cational situations where resources are limited. Electronic communication
and the World Wide Web are also becoming increasingly available and
offer exciting opportunities to bridge the distances between language class-
rooms across cultures and facilitate joint ethnographic projects. Dodd (2001)
reports on an email-based project to teach language and culture to English
and French schoolboys who hitherto had little motivation. Carel (2001)
reports on a project that trains learners to be ‘virtual ethnographers’ using a
combination of video, computer software, and classroom investigation.
Ethnography, then, is clearly a core feature of the intercultural approach.
First of all, learners acquire observational skills that will stand them in
good stead when they encounter unfamiliar cultures first-hand. Their
ethnographic observations can be linked to ways of managing intercultural
clashes, and the fostering of mediation skills. However, perhaps the most
useful application of ethnography in ELT is to the systematic observation
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Intercultural Approaches to ELT
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of how people from different cultures – whether national cultures, profes-
sional cultures, ethnic cultures, or others – communicate. By training
learners to pay attention to the significance of the ways people from
different cultural backgrounds choose to communicate, we can equip them
to be independent, practical ethnographers and more efficient language
learners. Since interviewing informants and analysing their responses is a
key part of ethnographic training, Chapter 6 concentrates on ways of
exploiting interviews in the intercultural classroom.
Ethnographic Approaches to Culture and Language
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Chapter 6
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